Odaiba

Today I ventured out on the yurikamome monorail across the Rainbow Bridge to Odaiba, the manmade island that houses futuristic, post-modernist buildings and sprawling shopping malls.  Also of interest are the huge ferris wheel (Marissa, do you want to ride this together?) and the Toyota showroom.  There's also a "theme park" hotsprings onsen, which I will probably go back to visit at some point, but that's another story...

Rainbow Bridge

Fuji Television Japan Broadcasting building

The Tokyo "Big Sight" International Exposition Center (looks upside down, doesn't it?)

The Venus Fort shopping center (no windows and painted inside to resemble a small Renaissance-era European town?!?  Only in Japan...)

Dream Bridge

Statue of Liberty.....?

The most striking thing about my visit to Odaiba, which is only a few minutes on the monorail outside of Tokyo, was how few people there were (see Dream Bridge).  Even during working/school hours when I'm out and about in Tokyo, there are always people all around me in incredible numbers.  I remember when I came to Tokyo for the first time when I was 15, it wasn't the cultural differences that shocked me so much as the sheer number of people packed onto this tiny island.  It's overwhelming, especially for a girl who calls the rolling, largely uninhabited hill country of Texas home.  It was refreshing to sit by the ocean, read in the sunshine and just not be around other people for a while.

It's kind of funny, now that I think about it that I would have such people fatigue.  I've spent almost two weeks now trying to reconnect with the contacts I have here and set up volunteering for the Japanese Red Cross.  Until I accomplish those things, I don't spend a lot of time actually interacting with people, unless I expressly seek out opportunities to do so (ex: conversation cafes, tourist information centers, sitting with my housemates, etc.)  I do, however, spend just about every waking moment surrounded by people I don't know.  Japanese people by custom don't interact with people that they're sitting, standing, walking next to on the street, in the train, etc...  Foreigners also don't ever seem to acknowledge other foreigners.  There are rare exceptions to this rule, such as when an unusually gregarious Japanese person comes up to you to practice his or her English.  For the most part, the rule holds that when you're traveling in Japan alone you're constantly surrounded by astonishing numbers of people but rarely interacting with them.